The white man tried to eat and couldn’t and a rage seized him. He swore and threw the bread and meat at Mayfield, the biscuit striking him in the face.

They went on, and when they passed what Mayfield knew was the last cabin they blindfolded him.

He was asleep when the wagon stopped. He awoke sore and cold and disoriented at the abrupt cessation of motion and the ending of noises. He couldn’t number the many hours of the monotonous creaking of the springs, the grinding of the wheels on the frozen ground.

Rough hands at the binding of muslin and the blindfold fell away. The moonshine was black and silver, blurred from hours of darkness like an ink sketch left in the rain. His vision began to clear. The dark earth glittered with hoarfrost.

Light, the black man commented.

Mayfield climbed over the tailgate and fell against the wagon, his legs asleep. He righted himself and turned to look about.

He still had no idea where he was but he perceived dimly they’d reached an area of human habitation. He could hear the lowing of cattle, a dog somewhere barking. He had a vague olfactory sense of woodsmoke, a barn, an outhouse.

The cabin they led him to had no furnishing save a bed. He could see that much by the moonlight, then the door closed behind him and he was shut into a windowless darkness, a spiderlike negation of light against the paler black. The air in the cabin was fetid with the sour stench of sweat, old unwashed clothing, the stale smell of burnt-out fires, the odor of rancid grease.

He shoved angrily at the door but it had been latched in some manner from the outside. He lay wearily on the bed.

After a while the door opened and a heavy Negro woman came in carrying in one hand a kerosene lamp and in the other a plate. She moved slowly, deliberately, her face vacuous and benumbed as if she had been roused from sleep. She reached him the plate and he took it and sat on the side of the bed holding it. He could smell fried sidemeat, field peas. The angular black man stood in the doorway watching him.

Where am I? Mayfield asked the woman.

The woman didn’t look at him. Why, you right here, she said. Where did you reckon you was?

He awoke sometime in the night scratching all over from the bites. He could feel something verminous crawling about under his clothing. He got up slapping at himself. You filthy little son of bitches, he said, half sobbing, uncertain even as to whom he was talking. He took off his coat and rolled it into a pillow. He lay down on the floor.

In the morning there was more food, grits and greasy eggs fried hard and rubbery, their edges seared to frail black lace. He spoke to the woman but he might have been talking to the wall for the response he got. Later the man with the muttonchop whiskers and his black interpreter came. The man wanted something done for his mouth.

Mayfield had his bag, but there was nothing in it for such as this. Worse yet, there was nothing in Mayfield’s knowledge or experience for it. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t even suspect what it was, so he did what doctors have done since time immemorial when they don’t know what else to do: he put on a confident manner and he swabbed the man’s mouth with antiseptic and hoped for the best.

All right, he said to himself when they had gone, I am stuck here at his beck and call.